A Guide to Using AI in Your Nonprofit Strategy
For many nonprofit leaders, AI feels full of promise but difficult to institute in the world of rapidly evolving tech and tools. However, the secret to AI isn’t the technology itself; it’s how you integrate it into your existing human workflows.
Based on our recent collaborative session with Thread Strategies and Raise HECK, we’ve identified three core pillars for adopting AI with integrity and efficiency.
Identify Your Use Case
Insights from Loree Lipstein, Thread Strategies
Whether it is automating repetitive tasks, allowing you to focus on strategic work, or complex problem solving like predicting giving patterns, your AI use case must be rooted in your specific organizational needs. To find your ideal entry point, Thread recommends starting with these questions:
What is taking up your time?
What problem are you trying to solve?
What is keeping you from doing high-impact work?
Once you’ve identified your AI use case, Loree emphasizes the importance of testing any new tool before a full-scale rollout to ensure usability and integration with your existing systems.
Innovation with Integrity
Insights from Laura Toscano & Jess Hayter, CIMA Consulting
As CIMA demonstrated through our own internal AI policy development, technology is most powerful when it's governed by human values. At CIMA, we believe in a hybrid approach: intentionally utilizing AI for efficiency in data-heavy tasks like prospect research, while protecting the 'human-only' creative thinking and writing that remains core to our work.
To maintain integrity while innovating, we recommend:
Human-Led, Always: AI is a tool. It can be a valuable part of your process, but it won’t replace your wisdom and years of experience.
Keep AI in its Lane: If an API, algorithm, or deterministic automations can get you the answer, don’t default to AI for the sake of convenience. In our prospecting tools, we pull data from verified sources (like the ProPublica API) first, wherever possible– both for data integrity and to minimize our environmental impact.
Privacy by Design: Before adopting any tool, ensure it aligns with your internal data ethics and protects donor privacy.
Choose the Right Partner and Stack
Insights from Sally Heaven & Charlotte Kresse, Raise HECK
While selecting an AI tool involves an objective process—requirements grids, gap analyses, and API evaluations—choosing the right implementation partner is often less defined. Raise HECK reminds us that choosing a consulting partner is just as vital to your success as the technology itself.
Raise HECK recommends evaluating consultant partners based on:
Demonstrated Expertise: Have they done this specific type of assessment or software development before?
Values & Ethics: Do their values around your mission and Ethical AI usage align with yours?
The "Vibe" Check: Don’t discount chemistry. A consulting partnership is a close relationship. If you are stuck between two qualified tools or firms, use "vibes" as your tie-breaker.
Putting it into Practice
The goal of technology is to give you more time to focus on your mission. Whether you are using AI for foundation prospecting or to personalize donor outreach, the human element remains the most important part of the equation.
Need a deeper dive? This guide was developed from the insights shared during our recent webinar, "Practical AI and Tech for Nonprofit Fundraising."
You can watch the full recording here (Passcode: 6P0r=v$2).
Want to chat about your specific tech needs? Click here to schedule a time to meet with our team.
